even more great advise from the people

Now that I've played a bit, the rudamentry AI is killing it for me.Hegemony Team,I know you know this already but the future playability of this game is compromised by the AI. I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I find this Hegemony game isn't as challenging or interesting as I initially thought. I know that sounds a little harsh but bare with me. Playing as Thebes in sandbox...one can easily take over greece or the majority of greece and simply build up to a messy and inevitable final conflict with Athens. Unless I'm missing something, because I haven't truly played that much, there is no serious "in game events" or any real threat of invasion or war declared on me from rival computer factions. As much as I would like to play other factions in this game, I fear they're all going to play the same with all the greek factions eventually laying down except Athens. Its simply not interesting or compelling enough to keep playing. With all respect I know your team knows this, and I am hopeful you as a team will address this in future releases. Having said that, If I'm wrong or ignorant of other factions or game scenerios, or I need to simply play more, let me know, so I can play them.

We as fans need to keep in mind that Phillip wasn't designed with the sandbox mode in mind(added per fan request and general awesomeness factor), but rather to concentrate on the main campaign, within which the AI certainly serves its purpose. There are some older threads laying around where the devs state the new AI has been designed to be more dynamic and give more challenge in the open ended sandbox style gameplay.

Both the Athens and Sparta mini-campaigns help the give Gold fresh legs, have you tried them?

Thanks Brushy and Rob,I am aware of those 2 mini-campaigns. I just haven't played them yet. I will though. I'm kinda of biased against those mini-campaign because they start you with a faction that's already established and in the middle of a conflict. There is nothing inherently wrong with a campaign like that, but I really enjoy building and developing an empire/infrastructure/armies to build up to a challenging campaign. But...that's my personnel preference and no criticism of the mini-campaigns.Not to be difficult but I very slightly disagree with AI serving it's purpose with the Phillip campaign. Generally the AI in Phillip is ok/fine, but I noticed minor factions also just tend to lay down or just superficially raid to distract the human player. It's not horrible, and I guess it does serve it's purpose, but it does compromise the future playability of the game. The AI is just too predictable and un-dynamic, even in Phillip.Thanks for acknowledging my post. The hegemony franchise is so impressive...that I have no doubt future refinements and products will vastly improve in probably every way. God speed. I wonder if the Leafs will every make the playoffs again:)

You should try the Ionian campaign. True, Sparta is an established faction at that point in history, but that's not the part of the map you're playing in this campaign. Instead, you start with a single island on the Persian coast, and grow from there.

i just got through beating the boetians and it was somewhat challenging. but i agree with that the AI is very predictable. all they do is raids. once i got the hang of the game, i made some tactical treaties so that i would not be raided from all sides and could focus on where i was campaigning and then have some troops garrisoned where the raids were consistently coming in. i think the only thing that could make this much more dynamic and so much more awesome, would be for different factions to totally campaign their armies themselves in our territory instead of just some simple raids. that could make the game really tough because you would be campaigning somewhere with the bulk of your forces and then bam!, a country brings all out forces and war to pella. this could make things very challenging and interesting. like i said, it could make things really frustrating sometimes because you could get wiped out maybe. but it would be so much cooler when you did win the game because of the challenge. but you wouldn't want all of the other factions just focusing on us but also have wars with other factions that they are hostile with so that it is realistic.